Motor vehicles, and particularly trucks, are known to have one or more tow hooks mounted to a front end or rear end thereof. These tow hooks provide a convenient attachment point for a rope, strap or cable when the motor vehicle is being towed or pulled out of a predicament, secured from movement during shipping, or when the motor vehicle is doing the pulling from its front end or rear end.
Motor vehicles, including trucks, are also required to have supplemental restraint systems, such as air bags, installed for occupant safety. These supplemental restraint systems are generally intended to activate at the command of a control system that detects a frontal impact of a specified severity. It is not desirable for the air bag to activate without such an impact occurring. The motor vehicle is also built with a front bumper system that is adapted to readily absorb, in a planned and prescribed fashion, frontal impacts of lesser severity without activating the air bag. A tow hook assembly that is rigidly mounted to a front bumper of the vehicle presents additional challenges to designing for these desirable response characteristics, as the tow hook might protrude from the face of the bumper, and thereby become the initial point of contact during an impact.
Due to the location and nature of such prior art tow hooks, a motor vehicle provided with both an airbag system and tow hooks has often required adjustment of the airbag system to accommodate the effect of the tow hook(s) to meet desired airbag deployment requirements during low speed impact events. Consequently, it is desirable to provide tow hooks on an automobile that will perform their intended towing function, but will not affect the operation of the airbag system.